I've spent almost my entire career as a journalist covering tech in and around Silicon Valley, meeting entrepreneurs, executives and engineers, watching companies rise and fall (or in the case of Apple, rise, fall and rise again) and attending confabs and conferences. Before joining Forbes in February 2012, I had a very brief stint in corporate communications at HP (on purpose) and worked for more than six years on the tech team at Bloomberg News, where I dived into the financial side of tech. Before that, I was Silicon Valley bureau chief for Interactive Week, a contributor to Wired and Upside, and a reporter and news editor for MacWeek. The first computer game I ever played was Zork, my collection of now-vintage tech T-shirts includes a tie-dye BMUG classic and a HyperCard shirt featuring a dog and fire hydrant. When I can work at home, I settle into the black Herman Miller Aeron chair that I picked up when NeXT closed its doors. You can email me at cguglielmo@forbes.com.

"Designed by Apple from the ground up, Maps gives you turn-by-turn spoken directions, interactive 3D views, and the stunning Flyover feature. All of which may just make this app the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever." Source: http://www.apple.com/ios/maps/

Updates with Apple comment in eighth paragraph.

A week before Apple’s developers conference in June, where it was expected to announce the rumored new version of its mobile operating system, Google, in a sign it was worried about what having its map services displaced on the iPhone, held an event to remind reporters of all the effort that has gone into and continues to go into its maps technology.

Turns out Google didn’t need to worry after all.

Apple’s new Maps app, released yesterday as one of the 200 new features in iOS 6, is being called “dumb,” “unusably bad,” “awful,” “sad” and most charitably, “ambitious.” Users across the Web are talking about incorrect directions, the lack of local public transit information and poor search results that don’t even deliver addresses in the right city. Photos of Apple’s maps showing distorted images are rapidly turning into humorously named slideshows, including a Tumblr called “The Apple iOS 6 Maps are amazing. Not.”

“The classic criticism that thoughtless Apple haters use against the company is that it makes products that are pretty but dumb. Usually those criticisms are by people who don’t understand the value of a comprehensible user experience, frustrated by the reality that many people will eagerly trade the open-ended technologies of competitors for the simple and satisfying experience that Apple provides,” says blogger Anil Dash in a scathing takedown. “But this time, they’re right: Apple’s made a new product that actually is pretty but dumb. Worse, they’ve used their platform dominance to privilege their own app over a competitor’s offering, even though it’s a worse experience for users. This is the new Maps in iOS 6.”

In the prior versions of iOS, which powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, Apple did offer a Maps app with data from Google. But in iOS 6, it decided to ditch Google and create a new app that uses mapping data that Apple itself has assembled. A link in Apple’s Maps app shows the sources of its data, which includes TomTom, Acxiom, AND, CoreLogic, DigitalGlobe, DMTI, Getchee, Increment P. Corp., Intermap, Lead Dog, Localeze, Map Data Services Ltd., MDA Information Systems Inc., Urban Mapping, Waze, Yelp, and NASA, among others.

Even though Apple bought three map companies in the past three years – Placebase in 2009, Poly9 in 2010, and C3 Technologies, a 3D mapping company in 2011 – users and reviewers are chastising the company for replacing Google with an Apple app that seems more beta than final release. ”What I always say with every new platform, if you don’t have any tolerance for pain, don’t be one of the early adopters,” says analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif. “The problems will get modified, corrected and updated over the next few weeks. These things can be fixed in software.”

‘Just Getting Started’

Apple today said it “appreciates” the feedback from customers and that “it’s just getting started” with the new service.

“Customers around the world are upgrading to iOS 6 with over 200 new features including Apple Maps, our first map service. We are excited to offer this service with innovative new features like Flyover and Siri integration, and free turn by turn navigation. We launched this new map service knowing that it is a major initiative and we are just getting started with it,” said Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman. “We are continuously improving it, and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get. We’re also working with developers to integrate some of the amazing transit apps in the App Store into iOS Maps. We appreciate all of the customer feedback and are working hard to make the customer experience even better.”

How big a gaffe is this for Apple, which has become the world’s most valuable company largely on the success of the iPhone? Investors didn’t seem overly concerned, with the shares falling less than 1 percent to close down $3.40 to $698.70 in Nasdaq trading. They reached a record earlier this week, topping $700 a share.

“We’re not too surprised with the mixed reviews with the Maps application. It is the first version that Apple is doing,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee in San Francisco. “We don’t think it’s that big of a deal because we think Apple can fix it…We suspect the Maps application will get better, whether it’s fixing bugs or adding more functionality. This is just a short-term issue.”

Whether the criticism of Maps leads users to hold off downloading iOS 6 remains to be seen. Apple also starts selling tomorrow the iPhone 5, which runs on iOS 6, and users have already started lining up at it stores. The company said earlier this week that more than 2 million users pre-ordered the new smartphone on opening day and that demand has already outstripped supply. Analysts predict Apple could sell as many as 10 million new iPhones in its first week on the market.

New York Times reviewer David Pogue said iOS 6 has many notable improvements, including improved voice recognition with Siri, Passbook, which stores loyalty and reward cards, and software for stitching together photos into a panorama. But Pogue admits the Maps program leaves something to be desired. “Apple’s database of points of interest (stores, restaurants, and so on), powered by Yelp, is sparser than Google’s. There’s no built-in public-transportation guidance. For big cities, you get Flyover, a super-cool 3-D photographic model of the actual buildings — but losing Google’s Street View feature is a real shame.”

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If Steve was alive i can almost bet that Apple’s mapping application wouldn’t have been launched this early. Steve was a perfectionist and its was rare for something to be launched without proper testing (the iphone 4 was 1 of their few disasters when it came to the antenna but lets face it.. the man was dying.. what more was to be expected at that stage) There was a time though when steve wouldn’t ship if the font was just a few pixels out of place

The mapping application is a clear indication that Apple is going downhill. Steve obviously left the idea for the app with apple before he left this world along with future iphone designs and other products that will launch within the next 20-30 years. its just a shame that the staff are not taking his must for perfection so strongly now that he’s gone.

Apple needs a new head.. a new face.. one which isn’t pushed on slapping out any old crap to the market (microsoft exists for that) Apple needs a new perfectionist.. someone who will spend days in the office crying and walking around barefoot without showering just how steve did!

I disagree with Tim Bajarin that no one will hold off on buying an iPhone 5 because of maps. I’m holding off. That, and I hear iOS 6 is a little clunky. What does ‘clunky’ mean? I don’t know, which is partially why I’m holding off.

I learned a long time ago to not jump into new operating systems. I almost always wait for awhile to update (I have an iPhone 4). I want to see someone else’s iPhone 5 first and see how well it works.

I understand why Apple needs to do maps, since Google wouldn’t put some of the best features of their mapping into iOS. And yes, Apple will improve it and get it right. I think for now I’ll just keeping using my iPhone 4, Google maps and Navigon for voice directions when I need it.

Why is “We are continuously improving it, and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get,” seen as a legitimate excuse? Maps is not a self learning application. It might be a cloud application, but more people using it will not make it better by itself. The cloud is just a simple way of saying this is not yours and we control it with or without your feedback. We can update it anytime we want and we can take your precious software away whenever we want.

I have no doubt that Maps will get better. But it will not get better because it is a cloud application and more people are using it. If that was the case, Google would dominate mapping forever, as Google maps is also a “cloud” application, more people currently use it, and Google is actually responsive to customer complaints instead of telling their customers they are holding it wrong.

Quit giving Apple a free pass. They make average hardware and software encased in lovely designs and sell them with a 30% to 40% markup. If Microsoft ever pulled the “we are removing this option for this inferior option that we control” game, they would be sued so fast for cultivating a monopoly it wouldn’t be funny. As it is this is very similar to Microsoft’s internet explorer cases, only in this case the product really is worse and you really cannot uninstall it freely.